Friday, October 5, 2018

The PS 25 saga continues: the DOE apparently gives into Eva Moskowitz' demand to provide space for a Success middle school

PS 25 in 1931

Two days ago, Chalkbeat
and the Daily
News reported that the DOE is planning
to submit to the
demands of Eva Moskowitz and provide space inside the PS 25 building for
another Success Academy middle school. As I told Ben Chapman of the Daily News, it is
unconscionable to allow Success to expand its empire inside this building,
especially given its history of repeatedly
abusing children’s civil rights.

If DOE goes ahead and closes PS 25 it would be even worse – a school composed of 100% children in
poverty, 95% of them black and Hispanic, about one quarter with disabilities, about
22% homeless.And yet, according to the DOE
performance dashboard, PS 25 is the fourth best public elementary system in
the city in its impact on learning, and outperforms every charter school in the
city, except for one Success charter in the Bronx.

And the school accomplished this without suspending or
pushing out a single child, unlike the charter schools in the Success
chain.As Politico
reported over the summer, Success ejected all of the students with disabilities in in the
12-1-1 class in their Bed-Stuy middle school last year.And as I
described here, this was no fluke, as the charter chain eliminated one
fourth all their self-contained classes for special needs children last year.

To recap, PS 25 parents sued last
year after the DOE announced its intention to close it.They won
a temporary restraining order from Judge Katherine Levine of the Kings
County Supreme Court to keep the school open for at least another year, until
she could more carefully consider the legal issues in the case.I wrote an
open letter to the Chancellor that was published in the Washington Post, urging him
to keep the school open because of its tremendous record of success in educating its high
needs students. No follow-up legal proceedings have yet been scheduled and the
DOE has made no move so far to violate the court order.

According to the just-released state scores, PS 25 surpassed the city
average in its results, even more than in 2017, despite all the controversy and
stress on children who had been told that their school might be closing right
before the math exams.PS 25 students achieved
50% proficiency rates in the ELA
and 70.7% in math as compared to Citywide averages of 46.7% ELA and 42.7% in
math.

Alex Zimmerman of Chalkbeat claimed that the test score
performance of PS 25 students “could partly be the result of natural
statistical swings in scores that can occur in schools that serve so few
students.”Yet PS 25 test scores have risen
steadily over the last four years, in a trend line that would be difficult to
describe as a “statistical swing” by any definition.Here are the comparative figures, with data taken from the DOE
performance dashboard and this
year’s results added:

Though as I have written elsewhere, while the variable design of state exams themselves make year-to-year comparisons unreliable, these results are exceptional, especially given the disadvantaged background of the school's students.

Also, despite the account on Chalkbeat that the school is spending
$50,000 per student, the DOE budget
transparency report assumes total enrollment of 60 students, though according to Chalkbeat itself, PS 25
actually has 87 students this year; which means the real figure is about
$29,000 per child.Meanwhile, scores of
other NYC public schools spend far higher per student amounts, according to that same budget document, with
far worse results.

PS 25’s enrollment didn’t fall despite the best efforts of
DOE, because parents refused to transfer their kids out of the school when they
were told to do so, even before the court ordered it would be kept open for
another year. The school even has a (small) preK class and a Kindergarten class
this year, contrary to reports.

Zimmerman reported that DOE intends to hand over the
space now occupied by PS 25 to yet another unspecified charter school if they
are legally allowed to shutter it: “But if
the closure goes through, the education department will likely reserve the
space for another charter school, officials said.”

If so, a school building created with taxpayer money would
be handed over to charter schools, with the entire building taken from the public
and given over to private hands.What a
sad fate for a public school with a proud history of serving the community
for nearly 100 years.

And all the PS 25 kids will literally be forced to leave an stellar
school that has managed to provide small classes to its high needs students and
proven itself over the last five years in terms of results. Not to mention the likelihood that their
excellent, experienced teachers will likely be forced to join the Absent
Teacher Reserve, as what usually happens when a school closes, and never again be
assigned to a permanent class or allowed to provide the close, ongoing
instructional feedback and emotional support that students need.This even as the ATR is already costing the
city more than $150
million per year. What an awful waste of human lives and talent.

Instead, as I suggested previously, the Chancellor should be
celebrating the achievements of PS 25, assigning more preK and 3K students to
the school, and emulating its success as a model for what can be achieved when kids
in poverty and with special needs can achieve when given small classes and a real
chance to succeed.

If the school does close, and the building given over to yet
another Success charter school, it will reveal that in this city, the vast public
relations and political influence machine of the charter lobby, fueled by
hedge-fund money, may have won over simple justice once again.

Contact key education policymakers

Contact Board of Regents members' emails below.Click here to find your StateSenator; here for your AssemblymemberClick here to find your City Council member; click here to see contact information for Council members on Education CommitteeFor all your elected reps, click hereSpeaker Carl Heastie